I’m raising teenagers right now, and I have no template that isn’t riddled with guilt and shame. So we are making a new one.
This feels like the truest revolution: to raise children who can step into their own sovereignty without having to please me, or please a room full of people who are quietly certain they’re being judged too.
My kids won’t sit across from a grown man behind a closed door, answering questions about their bodies, learning that their bodies are bad. That alone lets me exhale.
I was a teenager stuck in a shame-and-guilt loop on repeat. I don’t have it all figured out. But breaking that loop, so they never inherit it, feels like the most important work I will ever do.
